Vacation

We have been on vacation this week in the Outerbanks NC. The beach the sun and good friends. It's been great. It didn't start off that way though... Last Friday night I was in the ER again getting meds and a CT for my stomach. We were planning on leaving early Saturday, but since I didn't get home till 3am that didn't happen. We left about noon. We made great progress and were only an hour behind Diana and Reeves, who left at 8am. It was dark and we were all tired and going through construction. Scott hit a pothole and it blew out the 2 tires on the passenger side. Needless to say we had to stop and spend the night there. Luckily there was a tire place that opened at 8am on a Sunday to get new tires. Scott payed $80 to have it towed there only to realize it was two blocks away! Then they took the tires off and and the rims were ruined. $500 and two hours later we had 2 new tires and rims that don't match. We both felt defeated then and totally thought about turning around. We hobbled on in here though and after seeing the beach we both wanted to stay.

The kids love the beach and Grant especially. A big sandbox for him to bury things in. You don't know how much time we spent digging in the sand trying to find shovels and other toys that he buried. Reagan thinks she can boogie board, but she lays on it in the sand and waits for the incoming wave to push her 6 inches. I got pinched by a crab the other day. I felt something with my foot going back out to sea and thought it was one of the "hidden" shovels and tried to stop it. Then I got pinched and Scott saw that it was a crab. Now I'm a little gun shy going into the waves. The kids on the other hand found it hilarious, especially Julia.

One night we took all the kids to play miniature golf. They LOVED it. It was so funny on the first hole because we let them go one at a time and it took forever. After that we let them all hit at the same time. Since none of them could hit very well they were not injuring each other, but they were afraid someone else was going to hit their ball so if someone came close the would reach down and grab it. We thought Grant would have a hard time losing the ball at the end, but he did pretty good with it. I don't know if it was because everyone else lost theirs or he was too tired to think at that point.

We took the kids to a "hike" on a paved trail today at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. The fly's were crazy and biting everyone. We didn't see an alligator, a red wolf, or even a bear. Only a couple birds and one lonely turtle. The last 3 evenings there has been so much smoke that you can't see very far or spend more than a few minutes outside. 44,000 acres of the refuge are burning because of a lighting strike at the beginning of May. We haven't been able to run all week so next week at the gym is gonna kick my butt!

We found this store here that is called Show Me your Nuts and totally cracked me up. It did have a ton of nuts in it though.

Tomorrow we are going to the beach for our last big beach day. I think we are all ready to get home though. Grant has been getting up at 5am our time every day and Reagan is sleeping with Julia and Emily so I don't think she's going right to sleep. Hopefully they will be like the dogs are when we pick them up from the kennel and sleep extra long for about a week. Somehow I don't believe that Grant is going to agree. :-)